Soap Opera Trailer Timings

After watching a large amount of TV I have only seen three soap opera trailers and all of them were for Eastenders. I have watched the same amount of the channel BBC1 to what i have for ITV1 and it seems to be that BBC1 uses trailers a lot more to advertise there soaps.

All the trailers that are for soaps that are on sites like youtube seem to have a majority of christmas ones. The soaps only bring out trailers when  a huge storyline is going to be shown and the biggest ones are set at christmas time. This means that during the year not that many are brought out.

The Eastenders trailers that I have seen on TV were on at 9:00, 10:30 and 7:00 all on completely different days and different trailers.

BBC 1

7pm - An Eastenders Trailer - Total Wipe Out

                            - Doctor Who

10:30pm - An Eastenders Trailer - BBC weekend news

                                  - Ghost Train (film)

9:30pm - An Eastenders Trailer - Miranda (comedy)

                                - BBC news at ten

 The other programmes that are listed on here after Eastenders are the ones that were shown on TV before and after the trailer.

By doing this research it has given me insight into what times I would show my own soap opera trailer in order to attract my target audience. Most people watch the news so that is a good program to show my trailer either side of, another time that is good show soap opera trailers is at dinner time when families are sitting down to watch TV with their dinner. I think that from this research I would show the trailer between half past 6 and 9 o'clock as that is when my target audience is most likely to be watching the TV. This research will also help me to decide exactly which demographic groups would best suit my soap opera.

Soap Opera Target Audiences

Soap Opera Target Audience Questionnaire (task 9)

Soap Opera Target Audience Results Analysis

Soap Opera Conventions

The Purpose Of A Trailer

I have looked into why media texts use trailers and what they achieve by doing so and I have found a number of different things out about them.

Soap Opera's, Films and other media texts all use trailers in order to:

• Attract people to watch or use the text - especially their target audiences and even attract new people to use them as well.
• It shows the audience the dates and times of which it is on or when it is released, this means that the audience know all the information they need and are then able to use or watch the media texts.
• To engage all the viewers with the new story lines as well as current ones.
• To encourage the viewers to watch that particular episode.
• To give a preview of what is going to happen in the text.
• Overall to advertise the soap.

Soap trailers are on when the soaps target audience is most likely to be watching, most women are likely to watch the soaps and normally watch them around dinner time or in the early evening. This means that it is best to show the trailers that are for particular episodes in a soap in the adverts of the soap itself, that way you know that the audience that watches the soap are going to see the trailer for that storyline.









The trailer has to have an open narrative otherwise it will give away too much about the story lines, characters and the soap which means that the audience don't even have to watch the soap to find out the endings to things or any other information. A lot of soap opera trailers use cliff hangers so that the audience see the start of something but they need to watch the soap to find out the ending, the audience are normally introduced to a number of characters in the trailer so that they know who is going to be involved in the storyline. By doing all of this the audience are drawn into the soap and then the soap gets more viewings when it is shown on TV.

By doing this research I will know how to set the trailer out when editing it and the content that it will have to include. Although my trailer won't actually be shown on the TV I know that it has to be shown a particular way to draw the audiences attention and get my target audience to watch it. I also know that most soaps are shown before the watershed so the soap itself as well as the trailer has to be suitable for all age groups that may be watching the TV at the time the trailer would be shown.

Soap Opera History

Why soap operas are called soap operas -
In the 1920's radio was going really well and broad casts wanted to get advertisements in to increase profits Radio stations got businesses who sold house hold goods to sponsor the radio shows. They were to appeal to female homemakers. All the networks had serials aimed at women and companies selling cleaning products wanted to sponsor the shows. In 1939 the press started to call the shows 'soap opera' as so many of them were sponsored by soap manufactures. - This information was taken from here - http://www.ask.com/questions-about/Soap-Opera-History

What the longest running soap is -
Eastenders = 19th February 1985 = 26 years

Emmerdale = 16th October 1972 = 39 years

Coronation Street = 9th December 1960 - 51 years

The Arches = 1st January 1951 = 60 years
- The Arches is the longest running British soap opera.
All of this information was taken from the soaps own websites.
The pictures that I have used show the different in the logo that were used for the soaps when they were first broadcast to the present day.

Key conventions found in British soap opera -
- there on every week
- they have the same times and days of which they are on each week
- each one is set in the same locations

These are pictures of the pubs used in Eastenders, Coronation Street and Emmerdale.

Most watched episodes according to BARB figures -
Eastenders = 8.98 million
Coronation Street = 8.86 million
Emmerdale = 7.01 million
Casualty = 5.64 million
Holby City = 5.41 million
Neighbours = 1.37 million
Home and Away = 1.03 million

Most popular characters and story lines -
Eastenders =
- Phil Mitchell
- Ian Beale
- Sharon Watts
- Grant Mitchell
- Pauline Fowler

This is Phil Mitchell.



Coronation Street =
- The McDonald Family
- Sean Tully
- Raquel Watts
- Den Watts

This is the McDonald family.



Emmerdale =
- The Dingle Family
- Diane Sugden

This is the Dingle family.




Any Other information -
BBC 1 gets a weekly reach of 47,817 000's = 83.3%
ITV gets a weekly reach of 37,961 000's = 66.2%
Channel 4 gets a weekly reach of 35,262 000's = 61.5%
Channel 5 gets a weekly reach of 26,261 000's = 45.8%

Key Soap Opera Facts

Soap Opera History Task 8